Edge browser crashes on load – Windows 1703

Update from Microsoft:

Fixed in updates –

• 1709 – https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4093105/windows-10-update-kb4093105 | https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=kb4093105
• 1703 – https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4093117/windows-10-update-kb4093117 | https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4093117

We have seen roaming profiles in Windows 10 1703 unable to use the Edge browser if the profile was originally first created with Windows 10 1607.

The address bar briefly displays ms-appx-web:///assets/errorpages/acr_error.htm#https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=525773 then closes.

In our scenario, enabling the group policy ‘Prevent the First Run webpage from Opening on Microsoft Edge’ fixes the issue so it seems that the 1607 profile has an issue with first run.

Another fix (found in forums) is an undocumented one that does resolve crashes as well is

reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Spartan" /v RAC_LaunchFlags /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

however I don’t recommend it as we don’t know what it will affect. Maybe use it as a workaround temporarily.